Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [82]
“Legally?” Pitt asked with surprise.
“Of course! Prescribed for all manner of ills.” The apothecary ticked of his fingers. “Rheumatism, diabetes, consumption, syphilis, cholera, diarrhea, constipation or insomnia.”
“And does it work?” Pitt asked incredulously.
“It kills pain,” the apothecary replied sadly. “That’s not a cure, but when a person is suffering, it’s something. I don’t approve of it, but I wouldn’t deny a suffering person a little ease—especially if there’s no cure for what’s wrong with them. And God knows, there’s enough of that. No one gets better from consumption or cholera—or syphilis for that matter, although it takes longer.”
“And doesn’t the opium kill?”
“Babes, yes, as like as not.” The apothecary’s face pinched and his eyes were weary. “Not the opium itself, you understand? They get so they’re half asleep all the time, and they don’t eat, poor little mites. Die of starvation.”
Pitt felt suddenly sick. He thought of Jemima and Daniel, remembering them as tiny, desperately helpless creatures, so fiercely alive, and he found his throat tight and a pain inside him so he could not speak.
The apothecary was looking at him with sadness creasing his face.
“There’s no use prosecuting them,” he said quietly. “They don’t know any different. Sickly, worked to their wits’ end, and don’t know what way to turn, most of them. Have a child just about every year, counting the ones that miscarry—no way to stop it except tell their husbands no—if they’ll take no for an answer. And what man will? He has few enough pleasures, and he reckons that one’s his by right.” He shook his head. “Not enough food, not enough room, not enough anything, poor devils.”
“I wasn’t going to prosecute them,” Pitt said, swallowing hard. “I am looking for someone who poisoned an adult man by putting opium in his whiskey.”
“Some poor woman couldn’t take any more?” the apothecary guessed, biting his lip and looking at Pitt as if he knew the answer already.
“No,” Pitt said more loudly than he had intended. “A woman well past childbearing age, and a perfectly sober husband. She had a lover …”
“Oh—oh dear.” The apothecary was taken aback. He shook his head slowly. “Oh dear. And you want to know if she could have obtained the opium with which he was poisoned? I am afraid so. Anyone could. It is not in the least difficult, nor is it necessary to register one’s name for the purchase. You will be extremely fortunate to find anybody who recalls selling it to her—or to her lover, should he be the guilty party.”
“Or anyone else, I suppose,” Pitt said ruefully.
“Oh dear—the poor man had others who wished him ill?”
“It is possible. He was a man with much knowledge and authority.” Since he had voiced his suspicions of the widow, and of her intimate affairs, he chose not to name Judge Stafford. If it were Juniper, it would be public knowledge soon enough, and if it were not, she had more than sufficient grief to bear as it was.
The apothecary shook his head sadly. “Dangerous stuff, opium. Once you begin with it, there’s little stopping, and few that can manage to do without ever greater doses.” A flicker of anger crossed his mild, intelligent features. “Misguided doctors gave it to their patients in the Civil War in America, thinking it would be less addicting than ether or chloroform, especially if given by the then new invention of hypodermic syringe, into the vein rather than the stomach. Of course, they were wrong. And now they have four hundred thousand poor devils slave to it.” He sighed. “That’s one war where we both won and lost, I think. Perhaps we lost the more.”
“The American Civil War?” Pitt was confused.
“No sir, the opium war with China. Perhaps I did not make myself plain.”
“No, you didn’t,” Pitt said agreeably. “But you are perfectly correct. Thank you for your assistance.